Pakistan tops the malware index list, India 8th: Microsoft

SINGAPORE: At least four out of ten computers in Asia Pacific countries are likely to be infected with malware, a study by Microsoft has found.

While Pakistan tops the list of countries figuring in the Malware Infection Index 2016, India ranks 8th on the list.

The index, which was released on Tuesday, identifies the key malware threats in the region and ranks markets in Asia Pacific according to how much they are affected.

The index has also identified the top three most encountered malware as Gamarue, a malicious computer worm that is commonly distributed via exploit kits and social engineering; and Skeeyah and Peals which are trojans that try to look innocent to convince you to install them, the index reveals.

Out of the top five locations across the globe most at risk of infection, a total of four are from the Asia Pacific — Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nepal, topping the rankings at first, second, fourth and fifth places respectively in terms of computers encountering malware.

The Asia Pacific region is especially vulnerable with emerging markets most at risk of malware threats, the study has found.More than 40% of computers in the 19 countries in Asia Pacific region are infected against the global average being around 20%, Microsoft has claimed.

"The ranking in the index identifies the countries from where the maximum threats originate, Dhakad added.

In fact, the Windows Defender Advanced Threat Hunting team in April reported the discovery of a group of cybercriminals, dubbed PLATINUM, who have actively been targeting governmental organizations, defense institutes, intelligence agencies, and telecommunication providers in South and Southeast Asia since 2009.

Gamarue is particularly prevalent in the ASEAN region and was the third most commonly encountered malware family worldwide in 2H 2015. Certain heavily affected locations such as Indonesia reported Gamarue encounter rates of over 20% in 4Q 2015, close to the worldwide encounter rates for all threat families combined for the quarter.

It is commonly distributed via exploit kits and social engineering and has been observed to steal information from the local computer and communicate with command-and-control servers managed by attackers. It is particularly prevalent in Mongolia, with 35 computers infected out of every 1,000 running the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) in 2H 2015.

Trojans Peals and Skeeyah are generic detections for a variety of threats that share certain characteristics.

Trojan encounters increased 57% from 2Q 2015 to 3Q 2015 and remained at a high through the end of the year, which was attributed to increased encounters with Peals and Skeeyah.

They have been observed to download and install other malware, use your computer for click fraud, steal information like usernames and browsing history and give your PC access to a remote malicious hacker.

“The rising sophistication and targeted cyberattacks are causing devastating disruption and losses of data and information across all computer and Internet user segments. In fact, it generally takes on average up to 200 days for organizations to find out that they have been victims of cyberattacks," Dhakad added.

“We are noticing that four key common IT environment issues. Firstly, the usage of IT assets which are old, unprotected, or are non-genuine in nature, Secondly, unmanaged and unregulated IT assets usage, procurement and maintenance. Thirdly, poor cyberhygiene of users and negligent employee behaviour inside companies. Fourthly, the inability of the companies to timely monitor, detect and remove modern cyber threats, among others, are some of the common causes for cybercrime risks” he further said.